Pastillas De Leche

One of my favorite Filipino candies as a child is pastillas de leche. As with any pastillas, it is made of a thick liquid that’s solidified and meant to be consumed by allowing it to dissolve in the mouth. The main ingredient in making pastillas de leche is of course, milk. It is boiled together with sugar then wrapped in cellophane and Japanese paper. Typically, we use carabao’s milk to make pastillas de leche. However, I found a recipe that calls for powdered milk from Pinoyrecipe and I got really excited to try it out.

With a little tweak, here comes my own version of a creamy and delicious pastillas de leche:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup powdered skim milk
• 1 cup any powdered milk
• 1/2 cup condensed milk
• 1/4 cup butter
• granulated sugar for dusting/rolling

You’ll need cellophane, Japanese paper and scissors. First, you need to cut out the candy wrappers. It depends on how big your candy logs will be but in my case, I cut the papers to about 3″x4″ or 1/8 of a short bond paper. You may cut slits along the edges of the Japanese paper so that they’ll look festive when rolled. The size of your cellophane should be smaller, just enough to cover the body of your candy log to prevent it from sticking into the paper.

Get a bowl and pour your condensed milk. Sift your powdered milk into that bowl. Drop in your melted butter and mix everything well. It’s a sticky mixture so you might be required to knead. When done, set aside for about 10minutes.

Scoop up your milk mixture and form into balls. Carefully, rub the ball between your palms so that they’ll look like little logs. Roll the logs over  the granulated sugar and make sure it’s well coated. This will prevent the milk candy from sticking into the cellophane. Wrap them first in cellophane wrappers. Then, wrap them up in your colorful Japanese papers.

And voila! You got your pastillas de leche ready

You can also try different flavors.

For a mocha-flavored pastillas de leche, just dissolve 1 tbsp. instant coffee and 2 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder in 1/4 cup water. You might need to add more powdered milk to keep its consistency.

Or, you may want to roll it on toasted immature glutinous rice (pinipig) instead of the granulated sugar for an extra crunch.

Because of the simplicity of the recipe, there’s a lot of room for variation and creativity. Making these candies is really fun and easy!

You can serve the candies on a plate or in glass jars with cover. You may enjoy it as a candy, as a dessert, or as an ingredient to a dessert! I’ll be making panna cotta for our Christmas dinner and I’ll use these yummy pastillas de leche in it

Meanwhile, hope you enjoyed this stupendously easy recipe for a milk candy and try it at home too. I’m sure your kids will love it

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